How do I split a string on a delimiter in Bash?

Question

I have this string stored in a variable: ``` IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com" ``` Now I would like to split the strings by `;` delimiter so that I have: ``` ADDR1="bla@some.com" ADDR2="john@home.com" ``` I don't necessarily need the `ADDR1` and `ADDR2` variables. If they are elements of an array that's even better. After suggestions from the answers below, I ended up with the following which is what I was after: ``` #!/usr/bin/env bash IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com" mails=$(echo $IN | tr ";" "
") for addr in $mails do echo "> [$addr]" done ``` Output: ``` > [bla@some.com] > [john@home.com] ``` There was a solution involving setting Internal_field_separator (IFS) to `;`. I am not sure what happened with that answer, how do you reset `IFS` back to default? RE: `IFS` solution, I tried this and it works, I keep the old `IFS` and then restore it: ``` IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com" OIFS=$IFS IFS=';' mails2=$IN for x in $mails2 do echo "> [$x]" done IFS=$OIFS ``` BTW, when I tried ``` mail…

Accepted Answer

You can set the internal field separator (IFS) variable, and then let it parse into an array. When this happens in a command, then the assignment to `IFS` only takes place to that single command's environment (to `read` ). It then parses the input according to the `IFS` variable value into an array, which we can then iterate over.

This example will parse one line of items separated by `;`, pushing it into an array:

```
IFS=';' read -ra ADDR <<< "$IN"
for i in "${ADDR[@]}"; do
  # process "$i"
done
```

This other example is for processing the whole content of `$IN`, each time one line of input separated by `;`:

```
while IFS=';' read -ra ADDR; do
  for i in "${ADDR[@]}"; do
    # process "$i"
  done
done <<< "$IN"
```

How do I split a string on a delimiter in Bash?

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